Columnist Ed Quillen, who listed one of his major talents as “complaining” and who used his sharp pen and wit to poke fun at politicians and to chronicle the foibles of life in the Rocky Mountain State, died Sunday of a heart attack at his home in Salida.

Edward Kenneth Quillen III’s widow, Martha, said he was at one of his favorite pastimes — sitting in an easy chair and reading a history book — when his heart stopped. Paramedics were not able to revive him. He was 61 and had just tidied up his office in anticipation of writing his next column. His last column ran in The Denver Post the day he died.

By his count, Quillen had written 2,064,474 words in his columns since 1984. Conservatives called his work everything from outhouse material to slander. Liberals delighted in his skewering of conservative establishment types and his exposing of the inanities that are part and parcel of politics.

Dozens of people called his home Monday as word of his death spread to tell his family how dismayed they were to have lost such an important liberal voice. Martha Quillen said a lot of the feedback her husband got was from detractors, so he would have been touched to find out how many people valued his writings.

“He had no idea how many people liked what he did,” she said.

“Colorado has lost one of its most thoughtful and colorful characters,” Denver Post editorial-page editor Curtis Hubbard said. “For decades, Ed’s humor and keen eye shed light for Denver Post readers on topics ranging from our current politics to the state’s rich history.”

Quillen, who hated attending events where he couldn’t appear in jeans and a sweat shirt, jabbed the moneyed set as “Brie and Chablis elitists.” Homes thrown up in sprawling developments he called “plywood hutches.” A certain class of politician he referred to as “rich, white guys.”

Fictional foil

His fictional foil in many columns was Ananias Ziegler, “media relations coordinator for the Committee That Really Runs America.” Ziegler would spout whatever canned comments were coming from politicians that week, and Quillen would shut him down with his sharp-eyed observations.

“He was a trusted and experienced journalist who gave voice to the concerns of many Coloradans,” said U.S. Sen. Mark Udall. “His work covered areas of rural Colorado and topics that otherwise would not have received any attention in the news.”

Some of those overlooked topics are obvious from the headlines on Quillen columns: “Finally, we get an official state grass,” “Eliminate those pesky mountains” and “Disparage those vegetables while you can.”

Quillen’s columns were sprinkled with Bible quotes gleaned from his upbringing in a fundamentalist family. They were peppered with facts and figures that friends and family say he retained in prodigious quantities and could show off by hammering opponents in Trivial Pursuit.

“He was a font of what he would call ‘worthless information,’ ” Martha Quillen said.

Ed Quillen was born in a Weld County hospital in 1950 — a fact he gleefully liked to bring up with critics who said things like, “You ought to go back to where you came from, you Eastern liberal.”

His large extended family was in the industrial laundry business, but Quillen showed an early knack for journalism. He wrote stories and drew pictures for tiny newspapers he would give to his mother when he was 5 years old.

Underground paper

In high school at Greeley, he started an underground newspaper that included teacher reviews — and had his first taste of angering the establishment. He was editor of his college paper, where he continued the teacher reviews. He quit to take a job with the weekly Longmont Scene before he graduated.

He and Martha married in college. They had planned to celebrate their 43rd wedding anniversary in three weeks.

They went to work at, and later purchased, the Middle Park Times in Kremmling before Ed edited the Summit County Journal for a year and then moved to Salida to edit The Mountain Mail. In 1984, he began freelance writing, and a decade later, he started a regional magazine called Colorado Central Magazine. The Quillens sold it three years ago.

Quillen was proud to note that his freelance jobs included writing copy for Clean Scene, a laundry trade journal, and, with Martha, churning out adult Westerns, including “Santa Fe Slaughter,” “Utah Slaughter” and “Mexican Massacre.”

He published a collection of his columns in 1998 and co-wrote or ghost-wrote a number of books on such diverse topics as cocaine and mainframe computer programming. (Quillen may have come across as a country boy with his shaggy beard and rusty pickups, but he had been building his own computers for years.)

Quillen is survived by his wife; two daughters, Columbine and Abby; two grandsons; two brothers, Tony and Kurt; and his mother, Dorothy Quillen, as well as a large extended family. He is also survived by his latest beloved dog, Bodie, and “a bunch of obnoxious cats.”